INQUIRER Sports

GENEVA -- A Swiss mountaineer has died from exhaustion after reaching the summit of Mount Everest, his club back home in Switzerland said on Thursday.

Gianni Goltz, 44, had been attempting to climb the world's highest mountain without the aid of oxygen as part of a Swiss-German team, said Enrico Briner from the Swiss climbing association.

Originally from the mountainous area of Val Maggia in southern Switzerland, Goltz had practically reached the summit when he collapsed on Wednesday. His fellow climbers tried in vain to resuscitate him.

"He freely chose to scale 8,500 meters (27,800 feet) without the aid of oxygen. It's a risk," said a fellow member of his club in Ticino in southern Switzerland.

The first successful ascents of Everest without the use of bottles of oxygen were completed on May 8, 1978, by Austrian Peter Habler and Italian Reinhold Messner.

News of Goltz's death came on the same day that a 48-year-old Nepalese Sherpa broke his own world record by conquering Mount Everest for an 18th time.

Since it was first climbed in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the 8,848-meter (29,028-foot) mountain has been conquered more than 3,000 times.

Last year 557 people -- 254 via Nepal and 303 via Tibet -- reached the highest point on earth, which was a record.

The numbers are expected to be lower this year because of a climbing ban Nepal imposed up to May 11 to allow a protest-free path for the Chinese Olympic torch, which was carried up the northern approach to the mountain from Tibet.